by Kelly Havens Stickle
“Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you” (Isaiah 60:1 ESV).
How many of us struggle to arise – to arise and shine because Christ has shed His love abroad in our hearts? How often are we tempted to repress our joy, either because we know how otherworldly it is, or because we don’t fully understand it?
As I leapt up into the pure, white, smooth sycamore on my favorite farm and tucked my petite frame in the hollow of its old wood, where it had begun to rot at the center, my heart thrilled with a holy delight. The quiet safety of the nook in the tree, the beauty of the little valley I was in, and the sweet echo of Psalm 91 and Psalm 63 caused my heart to burst and my soul to magnify the Lord. “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty” (Psalm 91:1 ESV). “For You have been my help, and in the shadow of Your wings I will sing for joy” (Psalm 63:7 ESV).
Later that day, I began to ponder the real roots of my joy – the joy that has defined me since I was a little girl. What is the joy of the Christian really? Why do our hearts ring to a completely different tune…a melody that seems to be totally out of connection with this world? As I traveled back to that moment up in the sycamore, gazing up into the milky-blue of the frozen, winter sky, I began to see the many threads of our joy, in Him. How beautiful and rich our inheritance is in Christ!
A question rose up inside my soul, and I set about answering it like my little boys might seriously hunt for little treasures in the forest. What are the roots of this joy, of mine, that can never be extinguished? I imagined the long, winding, intertwining roots underneath the colossal sycamore in the cold, frosty ground. There were some big roots and some small, but every root had an important part in making the tree so majestic and strong.
Freedom
It seemed to me that the first and biggest joy root is our freedom. We are set free the moment we are born-again. We rejoice, because God’s wrath dies out like the calm, safe silence after the thunder, and our sins have been cast as infinitely far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12). We are weightless, because the center of our gravity shifts, and we know that our portion is not in this present world. There has been a release from the bondage of our misfocus, and we sing for joy, because we know that we no longer belong to this world but to the heavenly city, where we shall “behold His face in righteousness” (Psalm 17:15).
2. Known
Then there is another joy root – the root of being known. We exult inside because no matter what goes on around us, we have come to know and be known by God (Galatians 4:9). We beam with delight, because God’s light has shown in our hearts to give us the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6).
3. Treasured Possession
Another joy root is possession. We are His treasured possession – no longer our own and no longer in control. We have an unshakeable pulse of immortal strength and vibrancy in our core because our lives are no longer ours. We feel the truth of these words:
“For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that One has died for all, therefore all have died; and He died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for Him who for their sake died and was raised” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15 ESV).
We are radiant because we are flowing. We are gently guided and controlled by love. We feel invisible mighty waters moving about and directing the course of our soul, bearing us safely on through the vast, starry universe. The waters of our soul are entirely at His command. We rejoice out of relief; for we are water in the hand of the Lord. “The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He will” (Proverbs 21:1).
4. Awe & Passion
One other root of our joy is awe and passion. Our eyes glow with a quiet, trusting passion because when the world aches for wonder and cannot find it. We find it in worship, down upon our knees. We have been taught how to melt and say, “The sea is His, for He made it, and His hands formed the dry land. Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand” (Psalm 95:5-7 ESV).
4. Heard
Another root of our joy is that we are heard. We have joy because we cry out, and our voice pierces straight through the veil (that is Christ’s flesh) into the listening ears of our Father (Hebrews 10:20). Not only do we know that we are heard, but we know that the One who hears us is deeply personal. He is the one “who fulfills His purpose for me” (Psalm 57:2 ESV).
5. Wisdom & Understanding
Then there is one other root – one we easily forget. A root I often cling to desperately in the soil of my soul. This is the root of wisdom and understanding. As His people we have a peculiar joy, a joy completely out of reach from the world, because we know that even in the valley of the shadow of death, the “darkness is as light to Him” (Psalm 139:12 ESV). We know that in time He will shed light on every matter that perplexes us. We know that we may be perplexed, but never in despair. (2 Corinthians 4:8). We can say with David, “Behold, You delight in truth in the inward being, and You teach me wisdom in the secret heart” (Psalm 51:6). We have joy because we know the Spirit of Truth lives inside us and will speak to our hearts what He hears from the Father. (John 16:15)
6. Eternal Life
Then there is the blessed joy root of eternal life. This one bears us up constantly. It’s a central root, a root that is always delivering nourishing water right up to the heart of the tree. We have joy because as we live our daily lives, and watch the world crumble all around us, we draw deep from the precious truth of the temporariness of our heartache and struggles. We rejoice knowing that “the world and its desires are passing away, but the one who does the will of God shall abide forever” (1 John 2:17 ESV).
***
These are only a small, handful of the joy roots underneath the great tree of our life in Christ. But these roots and many others produce a great, fountaining joy that we must allow ourselves to experience as His children, even if it looks unusual in our present time. And then, in response to that fountaining joy, we must run fast and hard into the shelter of His will for our lives. We begin to see how His will is a shelter. We commit our steps to the Lord (Psalm 37:5) and we find that we are kept…kept steady and kept free from the clutches of sin. (Psalm 119:133)
But what does it take to hold onto our roots? What does it take to hold onto such joy in the barren wilderness of this world, especially amidst the troubling lukewarmness of modern times?
I believe it takes one thing expressly, one thing the world currently despises – it takes poverty of spirit. It takes a soul that never forgets his or her need for God. It takes a heart that ever longs and hungers for God and that isn’t afraid of the hunger pains, but can see them as a gift from the Father. It takes knowing that we can and should long because He promises to satisfy the desires of the longing soul (Psalm 107:9). How can one live fully in the Kingdom of God in the midst of a crooked old weary world that is sliding ever deeper into ruin? How can we maintain the pure radiant glow of our risen Lord, to “bear the image of the heavenly,” to keep ourselves in the joy given to us at the time of our heavenly birth (1 Cor. 15:49)? It takes a child’s heart, comfortable with its own smallness and eager for God’s enormity.
We must, when all the world doubts that God is there, and all the world doubts that God cares, step away like I did that frosty morning. Step up a little higher, go in a little deeper, into the hollow of His hand. We must climb into the hollow of the big safe tree that He is. When all the world is trapped in delusions, we must fight to keep hold of the truest reality. When all the world is full of chatter and complexity, we must let it be startlingly simple just as it was in the beginning. We’ve got to step away, into the wonders of creation, and feel again the bare bones of the goodness of existence itself, spoken into being by the loveliest Being there ever was and ever will be. And there we find that every voice, other than His, is gently silenced.
In my heart I go back often to the “sycamore vale”, as I call it, on my close friend’s farm. I look up, into the starry heavens that He made with His hands, and let my soul fly back home to where it really belongs – His world, where there is only joy. I let the lines blur a little between heaven and earth, because they truly have been blurred since the days of Jesus’ ministry when He preached that the Kingdom of God was at hand. We are in it now. It’s all around us. The Kingdom of God, teeming with utmost glory and spiritual richness, is pulsing all around us every minute; but we must get out of our worlds and into His to see this.
And there, in the shelter of the Most High, hiding away in the Almighty, we are able to get personal with Him again as we are supposed to. We can say with confidence, “He knoweth the way that I take, and when He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold” (Job 23:10 KJV). This is joy! – A personal union with our Creator. A lock and key fit with the One who knows our frame and has knitted us in our mother’s womb.
We will maintain our joy when we learn to meditate on these truths. When we can experience the Being, who made light itself, shining the light of His love down inside of us and witnessing to our spirits that we are one of His. Not by our own doing, but through God’s son. It’s receiving, more and more each day, the very One by whom and for whom everything was made. God’s son, the love of our lives. True Christian exuberance is fast fading from the surface of the earth, but it shall be preserved by the few who are humbly remaining His born-again children.
“But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13 ESV). Oh! Born of God! Hide with me in the shadow of your rebirth that has made you a child again. Watch the tempests fly by from within the hollow of his hand, like I watched the wind sway the branches around me and my dear friend’s little dogs scamper around at the base of the Sycamore trunk from within the safe shelter of the hollow nook. Sing for joy in the shadow of the Almighty.
You are His now. Remain hidden in His love, move not from the shelter of who He is. Don’t tear away from the roots of true Christian joy. Live there with Him, and in Him, not in yourself any longer, and let Him give you an experience of His steadfast love for you, His servant! Look upward and forward from the covert of His hand where you hide, and hear the most comforting musical words – “Behold, I am coming soon, bringing My recompense with Me, to repay each one for what he has done” (Revelation 22:12 ESV).
Be in the secret, safe place with Him often, and try to be content there. Don’t give up on discovering the riches of prayer, meditation, study of His word, and fellowship with His devoted saints. And one day, one glorious day, everything that has been hidden, there in that hollow between just you and Him, will be brought to light. “For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light” (Luke 8:17 ESV). Soldier on, my dear; hiding in Him on the battlefield and serving in the hidden places where He has placed you. Someday, perhaps very soon, all the beauty you feel inside will be all that you see. Because, we shall see Him as He is.
With lots of love,
Your sister Kelly
Author & Photographer Note:
Kelly lives in rural Ohio in an old home that she is restoring with her husband and two little boys. She has a deeply romantic heart and loves simple, natural beauty. From childhood she has had a fierce passion for God and the truth of His Word. She seeks to open our eyes to the beauty and power of God through her devotional writing on Instagram, her spiritually challenging podcast (The Eternal Perspective), and her Etsy sewing shop where she sells timeless country styles.
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